contourlevel: Highest-density contour levels

In cooltools: Practical Tools for Scientific Computation and Visualisation

Highest-density contour levels

Description

Computes density thresholds defining highest-density regions.

For each probability p, the function returns a level \ell such that the region where the density is at least \ell contains a fraction p of the total probability mass:

\frac{\int_{f(\mathbf{x}) \geq \ell} f(\mathbf{x})\,d\mathbf{x}} {\int f(\mathbf{x})\,d\mathbf{x}} = p.

The input may be a numeric vector or array containing sampled density values, or a function representing a density over a bounded rectangular domain. The density does not need to be normalised, but it must be non-negative and have a finite, positive integral or sum.

Usage

contourlevel(
  f,
  p = c(0.6826895, 0.9544997),
  xmin = NULL,
  xmax = NULL,
  neval = 10000,
  subdivisions = 1000,
  napprox = 30,
  rel.tol = 1e-05,
  abs.tol = 0,
  ...
)

Arguments

f	A non-negative numeric vector or array, or a function of a numeric vector. If f is a function, it must return a single finite, non-negative density value.
p	Numeric vector of enclosed probability masses. Every value must lie strictly between 0 and 1.
xmin, xmax	Numeric vectors giving the lower and upper limits of the integration domain. These arguments are required when f is a function and must have equal lengths. Outside this rectangular domain, f is assumed to be zero.
neval	Positive integer giving the maximum number of function evaluations used in each multidimensional numerical integration.
subdivisions	Positive integer giving the maximum number of subintervals used by integrate in one dimension.
napprox	Number of trial density levels used to interpolate the enclosed-mass function when f is a function. Larger values are generally more accurate but require more numerical integrations. If napprox=0, each requested contour level is determined directly by root-finding.
rel.tol	Positive relative tolerance used for numerical integration.
abs.tol	Non-negative absolute tolerance used for numerical integration.
...	Additional arguments passed to f.

Details

The returned contours define highest-density regions: points are included in decreasing order of density until the requested probability mass is enclosed. For multimodal densities, the resulting region may consist of several disconnected components.

When f is a function, the enclosed mass above a trial level is evaluated by numerically integrating

f(\mathbf{x}) I[f(\mathbf{x})\geq\ell].

This integrand is discontinuous at the contour boundary, so convergence may be slower than for a smooth integrand, particularly in high dimensions or for complicated contours.

One-dimensional densities are integrated using integrate. Multidimensional densities are integrated using cuhre.

If napprox>0, the enclosed-mass function is evaluated on a grid of density levels and inverted by monotonic linear interpolation. If napprox=0, each requested probability is solved separately using uniroot. The latter is generally slower but avoids the interpolation approximation.

Value

A numeric vector of density levels with the same length and ordering as p.

For a vector or array, all entries are assumed to represent cells of equal volume or equal statistical weight. Because the enclosed mass changes in discrete steps, the returned level is the sampled density threshold whose superlevel set first contains at least the requested probability mass.

Author(s)

Danail Obreschkow

See Also

dpqr

Examples

## f(x) is a one-dimensional PDF
# Compute the one- and two-sigma contour levels of a normal distribution,
# i.e. the values l such that
# integral over dnorm(x) >= l of dnorm(x) dx = p,
# where p = 68.3% and 95.4%.
l = contourlevel(dnorm, xmin = -10, xmax = 10, napprox = 0)
print(l)

# Compare these values with dnorm(1) and dnorm(2)
print(dnorm(c(1, 2)))


## f(x) is a two-dimensional likelihood function
# Produce 20%, 40%, 60%, and 80% highest-density contours.
f = function(x) {
  cos(2*x[1]-x[2]-1)^2*exp(-x[1]^2-x[2]^2-x[1]*x[2])
}

p = c(0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8)

# Values l such that
# integral over f(x) >= l of f(x) dx = p * integral f(x) dx
l = contourlevel(f, p, c(-5, -5), c(5, 5))

# Plot the function and contours at the levels l
x = seq(-3, 3, length.out = 200)
m = pracma::meshgrid(x)
z = array(Vectorize(function(x, y) f(c(x, y)))(m$Y, m$X), dim(m$X))

image(x, x, z, col = terrain.colors(100))
contour(x, x, z, levels = l, add = TRUE,
        labels = sprintf("%.0f%%", p*100), labcex = 0.7)


## f is a 20-by-20 array representing a gridded point set
# Produce 1000 points drawn from a two-dimensional normal distribution.
set.seed(1)
x = MASS::mvrnorm(n = 1000, mu = c(0, 0), Sigma = matrix(c(3, 1, 1, 2), 2, 2))

# Grid these points onto a regular 20-by-20 grid
g = griddata(x, min = -6, max = 6)

# Find one- and two-sigma contour levels and draw the contours
l = contourlevel(g$field)

plot(x, xlim = g$grid[[1]]$lim, ylim = g$grid[[2]]$lim, pch = 20, cex = 0.5)
contour(g$grid[[1]]$mid, g$grid[[2]]$mid, g$field,
        levels = l, add = TRUE, col = "red", lwd = c(2, 1), labels = NA)

cooltools documentation built on Sept. 11, 2026, 5:06 p.m.